Dads Read Too

This podcast series blew my mind. To give you an example, here is an introduction into the second part: At 28 years old, Annie Dauer was living a full life. She had a job she loved as a highschool PE teacher, a big family who lived nearby, and a serious boyfriend. Then, cancer struck. Annie would come to find out she had Stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It was so aggressive, there was a real chance she might die. Her oncologists wanted her to start treatment immediately. Like, end-of-the-week immediately. But before Annie started treatment, she walked out of the doctor’s office and crossed the street to see a fertility doctor doing an experimental procedure that sounded like science fiction: ovary freezing. The concept of "ovary freezing" was just being theorized, and since Ms. Dauer didn't have any foreseeable options - the extreme chemotherapy necessary to eradicate the Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma was most likely going to also kill the eggs in her ovaries - ...

WOW, such a special book: “ Little Bot and Sparrow ” by Jake Parker.  We often weren’t taught how to be a true friend or how to cope with the loss of friends, be it through us or them moving, growing apart, or worse. This book has so many great life lessons and they are conveyed in such a sweet and beautiful way! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀ Primary Theme: True Friendship Secondary Themes: Courage saying goodbye, coping with a loss of a friend, to dream ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Summary: From the inside jacket cover, “When Little Bot is thrown out with the garbage, he lands in a strange new world. Fortunately, Sparrow is there to take him under her wing. Together, they explore in the forest, share adventures, and learn what it means to be forever friends. This sweet and lasting tale beautifully captured the happiness and love that can come for making your first true friend – and the courage it takes when you have to say goodbye.” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Subject or Voice Specific: Little Bot is mal...

JER: “Ballet Cat: The Totally Secret Secret” by Bob Shea gave me all sorts of flashbacks to my childhood.  You have a friend you really like, but they do something that bothers you.  Do you risk the relationship and tell them?  Or do you keep the “secret secret” to preserve the relationship?!?!? Ohhh, the DRAMA!! I can’t take it!!! Primary Theme:  setting boundaries with friends  Secondary Theme: learning to be assertive  Thanks to my sister-in-law Ashley Lake for the great recommendation! 

When my spouse ordered an  Echo Dot  for Lake, I thought it was a bad idea.  I was worried it was going to turn into another technology that would suck my child’s brains out like a tablet.  But I was pleasantly surprised with how much she likes audio books and how it encourages correct pronunciation (a non-trivial matter when your child needs speech therapy).  Another cool feature, you can listen to podcast episodes, and there are great podcasts made just for kids like NPR’s “Wow in the world”. #amazon #amazonechodot2 #dadsreadtoo #dadsparenttoo #dadswhoparent

DO I HAVE A TRIBE? This is something I've been thinking about a lot the last few months and years.  Do I belong somewhere?  What does it mean to belong to a Tribe? Various events in the past few years have triggered these thoughts.  One of those events was visiting the  National Building Museum  with this Robert Frost quote from  "The Death of the Hired Man" :  "Home is the place where, when you have to go there,  They have to take you in."  - Robert Frost Another one of those events was this book - " There is a Tribe of Kids " by Lane Smith.  It explores what we do to belong, how we try to conform to a group - regardless of how different we may be, and how the search for community can be overpowering. Mallory and I have moved almost ten times since we were married 11 years ago.  Each time we've moved, we have managed to meet some of the best people along the way.  We both grew up in Utah, were married t...

Blog Post Inspired by:  Julián Is a Mermaid In hindsight, my first date with my wife had an inflection point - a moment that could have ruined the evening, but luckily didn't. Mallory mentioned that she was a "feminist", which prompted the response "does that mean you hate men?" from me. She laughed it off and explained that "feminism is the belief that the sexes are equal", and this appears to be the moment when I began to contemplate biological sex, gender, and gender roles for the first time. Eight and a half years later, after a long series of events including: 1. becoming involved in the  Ordain Women  movement; 2. reading  "Women and Authority"  which explores the concepts of feminism, diety, patriarchy, and the institution that is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; 3. becoming educated on fellow Latter-Day Saints who are experiencing general dysphoria over the patriarchy and asking for change; and, recently, 4. the ri...

Now, I don’t fully understand what it is like to be a girl, but I’ve  heard  and  read  that it can involve some unique challenges.   As a parent, I want to be able to prepare my children for the experiences they will have, for the emotions they will feel, and the activities they will participate in. But I also realize on a fundamental level that I can’t empathize with all of the emotions my daughters will feel, and that I can't prepare them for all of the experiences they will have because I haven’t felt all of those emotions and experienced all of those experiences.  This is partly why I love this book - "Dear Girl" so much.  It provides a vehicle through which I can talk to my daughters about experiences they might have, and give them an empathetic or sympathetic ear to listen to them.    It was a collaboration by mother Amy Krouse Rosenthal & daughter Paris Rosenthal while Amy was undergoing cancer treatment and published po...